In the News

A number of times we see people across geographies indulging in business transactions. When the distance becomes an issue, IT comes to the rescue, and that is exactly what happened in a recently released video by Microsoft. Microsoft’s creative depiction gives a strong message to make the end user cautious while making online transactions and proactively take charge of their digital assets before the hackers make them their own! So before the day closes, do update your systems and stay safe in the cyberspace.

Playground Games’ Forza Horizon 3 is a visually stunning achievement on the Xbox One. Taking place in Australia, the game manages to capture the beauty and essence of Down under; from lush rain forests to dense urban areas, Forza Horizon 3 is one of the best looking open world racers of this generation. In an era where the Xbox One has mostly struggled to run AAA games at a full native 1080p resolution, Forza Horizon 3 not only runs at that standard but amps up the image quality with 4x MSAA which results into a clean and crisp image. Forza Horizon 3 is bigger and better in terms of world size and intricate details compared to its predecessor making the 30fps cap sound reasonable.

The Xbox One Scorpio is going to be, to use Microsoft’s own parlance here, a ‘beast’ of a console. “The developers have to go through a transition, just like customers,” Microsoft’s Albert Penello said in an interview with The Guardian. “We are spending as much time and energy on our dev tools as we are on anything customer-facing. Making it easier for developers to take advantage of the power, making it easier for developers who are working on an Xbox One game to get a great Scorpio game and vice versa – we’re developing those tools now.”

Microsoft’s Phil Spencer said in an interview with Stevivor. “We’ve never seen a console sell that many units. The approach the team took was people are moving to OTT Video Services [over-the-top, like Netflix and Stan] and television’s getting disrupted and if we could build a console that could be at the center of this transition and really embrace not only people playing video games, but also people with the changing habits in television, you really take the console market and the gaming market and you expand it potentially.”

Looks like Microsoft’s Xbox One S gambit was a success – the redesigned, slimline console appears to have taken the UK market by storm, where sales of the Xbox One rose by 989% week on week following its launch. That’s not all, either, as for the week ending September 24, Xbox One S held a staggering 71% of the hardware market- up 76% year on year. “It’s great to see how popular both the Xbox One S and the FIFA 17 Xbox One S consoles are with fans, not just over the last week but since the Xbox One S was released in August. 4K
video streaming and 4K UHD Blu-ray have been extremely well received and we believe there is no better value right now for those looking to upgrade their console,” Xbox UK marketing boss Harvey Eagle told MCV.

The next Xbox has arrived with Microsoft’s Xbox One S and now users have a chance to win one for free. Enter the Xbox One S Giveaway to win one of the most cutting-edge game consoles on the market. This giveaway is available for a limited time only.

At the recently held Microsoft Ignite conference in Atlanta, USA, a slew of updates (and features) were announced for Office 365. Majority of these additions, in terms of security, intelligence, and collaboration, are directed towards the business users employing Office 365 in an organization environment.

Microsoft launched the preview version of Spark for Azure HDInsights last year. The same preview has now been translated into general release. This general release for Azure HDInsight is fully managed with Spark service from Hortonworks. Spark for Azure HDInsight offers the industry’s highest availability service level agreement for Spark deployments at 99.9 percent. Also, it comes with out of the box integration of open source notebook Jupyter.

Windows user in the US was paid $650 by Microsoft for distress caused due to repeated notifications to upgrade to Windows 10 as a result of which his grandfather’s computer system required 10 hours to get restored to Windows 7. This user, by name Jesse Worley, has stated that he spent almost 10 hours to re-install Windows 7 in his grandfather’s computer and make the OS look like the legacy Windows XP. This was because his grandfather reportedly suffers from Alzheimer’s.

Dell EMC has broadened support of Microsoft environments with new Microsoft Azure Services, Validated Systems for Microsoft Exchange and SQL, as well as customer momentum for the Dell EMC Hybrid Cloud System for Microsoft. The news comes in coordination with Microsoft’s Ignite conference in Atlanta, Georgia.